10 Country Artists Whose Songs Should Be On Nashville This Season

I’m from Wyoming. Yes, I know, you need a moment to let that sink in. Go ahead and say it: you’ve never met anyone from Wyoming! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that. But I prefer it to some of the other bizarre things people have said to me. Lots of people (especially people here in NYC) seem to think that Wyoming is a place where people ride their horses to school, use outhouses, and listen to country music all the time.

Sorry to shatter your fantasies, but those things aren’t true. (Ok, I do know a girl who rode her horse to school but that was ONE TIME.) And there are a lot of people who like country music in Wyoming, but I’m not one of them. At all. Which is why I was so caught off guard by my love for Nashville… and its soundtrack. I might be slightly obsessed.

So, you don’t like country music but you like Nashville. From what I can see, that’s a pretty common feeling. I think it has a lot to do with all the talent on the show and behind the scenes, but also with the fact that a lot of the music on Nashville is pretty different from mainstream country. Much of it falls a bit closer to folk or indie rock than it does to “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy”-type country.

So here are 10 artists you might not have heard of whose music would fit right in on Nashville. Some are up and comers, and others have been around for a while. Most fit into the category I like to call “hipster country,” but there’s a variety, just like the different acts on Nashville.